Andy's not here, man.: Dali

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Dali

No, no Salvador but the county of Dali in the northwest of Yunnan Province. It's a beautiful area spreading out pretty wide but most people will come to the old Dali city when they visit. I was lucky enough to meet up with the friend of a friend I made in Shanghai (the Shanghai friend was a friend of a friend of mine in SF) who was taiwanese and had already done some research on the area. Instead of staying in Dali city we stayed north a ways near butterfly springs. Our hostel was right on Erhai Lake and an extremely peaceful place to stay.

When I arrived at the hostel this was the view I was treated to from the front deck. not too shabby.

First nights dinner. delicious egg pancake, Sichuan eggplant and a spicy lotus root. but the key was this yellow tea. Made from a grain of some sort, it had a unique taste somewhat sweet but not overpowering. I ended up buying a box of bags of this.

The gate to one of the old villages around Erhai Lake.

A spice vendor at the village market

Vegetable stands.

To the right is a local noodle made from (what i was told was) chickpeas. we got the soup version to the left, which was extremely tasty

A pancake like bread made from the same bean. A bit too bitter for me.

baked baba. This stand was the best baba I had so far. Mostly it was friend and I really preferred it baked. Either salty or sweet. The sweet generally has a paste in it, the salty sometimes with meat and scallions.

We took a horse drawn tuk-tuk to a local park named "sea tongue" as it looks like a tongue coming out into the lake.

marsh lands as we near the park

a little cottage of sorts in the park

at the tongue. you can hire a boat to take you around. There are also fishermen abound looking to catch something.

North of the lake is another one known as west lake (almost every city seems to have a west lake it seems). this was a gate at west lake with the mountains beyond.